Any self respecting terrorist mastermind would most certainly go for the greatest damage. Seems to me an event over the oceans is limiting (no video or camera shots etc...)... Anybody else notice this?

Happy to be here. happy as I can be anyway as I watch the administration once again spread fear to hide their butts. Only a matter of time though huh? They have so much to hide and once they are exposed we can begin to heal.

And conspiracy theories are their fault, not ours. How they come up with these harebrained "plots" are beside the point. There are always suckers ready to believe them, but they're much fewer in number now than they used to be.

What the rest of the folks screaming "tinfoil hat" haven't figured out is:

The place a terrorist would blow up a plane is in front of the cameras, NOT over the ocean. That just covers up the evidence.

Making an explosive STINKS. You can smell the reaction halfway down the block. How long do you think someone would be able to run their little "nitro" factory in a sealed envriroment, like the john on an airplane?

In my opinion the object of terrorism is to make your opponent really sensitive to everything you threaten. That way you can cause the opponent huge expense through disruption of normal activity and the added expense of jumping at every shadow. You may even successfully coerce them into doing things you want. Have you noticed we are out of Saudi Arabia just like Usama demanded?

17. Actually, that's one way to achieve large loss of life & publicity.

Many planes have safely landed after a bomb went off aboard. If a terrorist can force a plane down in the ocean, it almost guarantees that most aboard will be killed, even if the plane otherwise might have landed safely, if it were within reach of an airport. It also initiates a large maritime SAR effort, which will be both (a) expensive, and (b) generate lots of news shots.

a critical mass where there are many terrorists who have a number of agendas and even more methods of achieving them. At one time there was political change as a motivating factor, now it may be moving toward simple revenge as well.

Even though this particular plot has been foiled it was partially successful in that many thousands of people are inconvenienced, their time is wasted and tremendous costs have been incurred.

Also, it sends a signal that there are many terrorists out there willing to do their bit.

At this point it should be abundantly clear that we are not "winning the war on terror".

BTW. When the 10 plane plot was uncovered during the Clinton Administration, I do not recall this much brouhaha.

I'm sitting in Europe, scheduled to take British Air back to the states on Friday, and I'm watching British Authorities meltdown in the face of an alleged terrorist plot. Rule of thumb--initial, panicked reports are usually unreliable. The Brits reportedly have taken at least 18 people into custody--all residents of Great Britain.

The last significant, successful plot to bomb a plane was in January 1995, when a group linked to Osama Bin Laden (this group included Ramsi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Khalid Sheik Muhammed, nephew of OBL) had devised a way to carry on a liquid explosive disguised to look like water. The detonator was a combination of gun cotton (looked like cotton balls), a small light bulb, a nine volt battery, and a Casio data watch. Ramsi Yousef conducted a successful dry run of this device and planted one on board a Philippine Airline flight in December 1994. That bomb killed one man (a Japanese citizen) and almost brought down the plane. The plan was to blow up twelve US jets transiting the Pacific basin. It was disrupted when an informant, Ishtiak Parker, walked into the US Embassy in Pakistan and ratted out Ramsi Yousef.

...................

In the back of my mind I worry that this threat might be trumped up in order to divert attention from the disastrous US and British policy (or lack of policy) in Lebanon. More likely, we have an informant in the UK that identified a potential plot that was in the dreaming stage but had not progressed to actual implementation. Rather than act like security professionals, the Brits are acting like panicked nannies. Very sad.

that's what I can't figure out! Why are they saying this was ' unimaginable' proportions?

I know that terrorists usually do like to do maximum casualties. And although it would be bad to kill the people on the planes, it's hardly what I would call unimaginable!

For that matter, why are terrorists still using planes? With all of the security on airlines now........expecially international airports, you would think they would find an easier way. Why don't they just release some kind of gas in a subway? Much less security but still maximum damage.

that's what I can't figure out! Why are they saying this was ' unimaginable' proportions?

Perhaps because blowing up 10 a/c at 225 people an aircraft would kill 2250 people in one fell swoop. That's not dramatic enough for you? Blowing up *TEN* airliners, even after all the "security" that's been invoked since 9/11, isn't dramatic enough?

Would you rather them set off a nuke in Chicago? Is that dramatic enough for you??

Wake up. Terrorists go for effect, and attacking the airlines again after all the efforts to make them safe would be a coup for them.

security seems to be, I'm surprised someone hasn't brought down more airliners. It's unimaginable to me that we haven't caught OBL, or that we haven't had another "beltway sniper", but 10 planes blowing up just sounds like they are sort of repeating themselves. Like a bad movie sequel, more explosions, but no new ideas...

1967: A BOAC Comet explodes over the Mediterranean southwest of Turkey. Although no motive was officially determined, the crime was believed to be an attempt to assassinate a Greek military leader mistakenly identified as a passenger

1976: A Cubana DC-8 crashes near Barbados killing 73. An anti-Castro exile and three alleged accomplices are put on trial (but acquitted for lack of evidence).

1985: An Air India 747 on a service between Toronto and Bombay is bombed over the North Atlantic by Sikh extremists. The 329 fatalities are (and remain) history's worst single-plane act of terrorism. A second bomb, intended for another Air India 747, detonates prematurely in Tokyo before being loaded on board.

1987: A Korean Air Lines 707 disappears over the Andaman Sea en route from Baghdad to Seoul. One of two Koreans suspected of hiding a bomb commits suicide before he's arrested. His accomplice, a young woman, confesses to leaving the device -- fashioned from both plastic and liquid explosives -- in an overhead rack before disembarking during an intermediate stop. (Although condemned to death, the woman is pardoned in 1990 by the president of South Korea.)

it would be nearly impossible to land on water and have ANY survivors. I'm making a few assumptions here. Assume the bottle, vial, or container was fairly small. Assume the initial result of an explosion would be fire, or some structural damage to the aircraft. In either case, that does not ALWAYS in total destruction of the aircraft, but certainly WOULD if the only option was an emergency water landing.

I'm not saying this whole story is true, but there ARE at least some alarming statements in the announcement.

1. Over water for the reasons mentioned above.

2. The targets were to have been United, American & Continental airlines. Those names do have a certain significance associated with the USA.

3 I'm notthat sure Shrub has enough power to control the cooperation of almost all of British Security.

It means the terrorists, too, will die and without a great number of victims. If this is just another stunt, the planners seem to want to link the U.S. and the UK, implying we are both victims of one enemy. This whole affair will probably whip many back into supporting any and all resource wars.

52. You haven't been paying attention to terrorism for the past 20 years.

Yes it's partly about the damage...But it's MOSTLY about the publicity. The WTC is a perfect example. After the first crash, the news cameras were all over the area. Just what the terrorists needed when the 2nd hit. Don't believe me? Just think about what comes to mind first when you think of 9/11: the Pentagon crash- (Which to me was worse considering what the target was) or the WTC?

You're not going to one-up 9/11 by crashing scores of planes out in the middle of no where. You want people to witness the horror

One of the ideas they also tossed around was hijacking a plane and crashing it into the CIA. I remembered the media reports at the time, although years later our national security advisor announced "no one could have imagined..."

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